Creating the Film Magazine Front Cover - 18/11/2011

Creating a film magazine with our Hangman movie being the main feature was essential in selling our film to the widest audience possible. I also had to ensure that the magazine cover, poster and trailer all linked in some way and that it was immediately obvious to the audience that these three components were all of the same marketing campaign. I took pictures of the main character Melanie (actress Lucy Rimmer-Hall) for the magazine cover and the poster since she is a well-known actress (as conveyed in the Pitch and Actors List), and edited them using photoshop. Here is how my original photo looked before I started photoshopping it:

 

And after spending a few days on photoshop, I transformed the image into this completed film magazine front cover:



As you can see, I have altered the original image in many significant ways. Firstly, I transformed all of the green forestry in the background (apart from the tree Lucy is clutching to) into black and white and lowered the contrast so the bushes and leaves kind of blurred into each other - black has connotations of death, evil and mystery, and this added with the blurred background (as if Melanie's life is 'blurring' away) encompasses the horror-mystery genre of our film completely. Secondly, I altered the brightness and contrast of Lucy and the tree in order to make her appear bright, young and innocent, and also make her stand out from the blurry black and white background. I further made the black-gloved Hangman hands stand out by making them more contrasting and darker to the greyish-looking background - the Hangman hands, in my opinion, were essential in linking the front cover, poster and trailer together since the film is called 'HANGMAN' and he (or she!) along with the hangman book is the main focus of all the sinister events taking place in the trailer. I did not include the hangman book in this cover because I thought that the words scrawled in the open book would distract from all the feature stories alongside the central image, and would make the overall front cover too busy and untidy. I lastly altered this original image by changing Lucy's eyes to a bright green colour that would stand out from the rest of the image, and match up with the green colours later used in making the magazine features stand out - I had decided at the very beginning that the colour scheme for this cover would be black, red, white and green for several reasons. Black was a dark colour that matched the horror-genre of this magazine perfectly, and this along with the red colour had connotations of death, blood and anger. The white would be a stark contrast from black, and this white colour against the black text box backgrounds would ensure that each individual magazine feature stood out. On the other hand, green has connotations of naturality and freshness - two characteristics that match the natural and clean-cut image of Melanie. 

Now that I had finished editing the image, I had to start making it into a front cover of a film magazine. Firstly, I needed to come up with a magazine masthead (i.e. name of the magazine). The masthead needed to be short and catchy - a word or two that made the horror film genre of the magazine completely obvious. After much pondering, I came to the title 'KILLER FILMS' - the 'KILLER' of course had connotations of death and brutality, and then 'FILMS' made the film orientation of the magazine even more obvious. The font I used coincides perfectly with the magazine title, as it looks as if a sharp object like a knife has slashed through letters in the name and the bloody red colour I changed it to adds to this gory ideology. Looking through other film magazine covers, I realised that nearly all of them had a strapline (i.e. slogan) under their masthead. For example, Empire's strapline is 'THE WORLD'S BIGGEST MOVIE MAGAZINE'. Therefore, I decided to create a strapline for my KILLER FILMS masthead with a horror orientation and wrote 'THE HORROR FANATICS MAGAZINE' under 'KILLER', and then put the date and price 'DECEMBER 2011 £3.99' under the word 'FILMS'. This masthead establishes the film genre of my magazine, whilst also establishing its house style. Now that I had made the masthead, I needed to illustrate the main feature of KILLER FILMS - our HANGMAN film. To connect this to the trailer (and poster), I print-screened the film title HANGMAN in the 'Cracked' font we used on iMovie, and then copied it onto the cover and edited it to make it smaller and sit alongside the image of Melanie and just above the sinister gloved hands of the Hangman. From now on, this font will be recognisable to the HANGMAN film. I then typed the film tagline 'THIS IS ONLY A GAME' and placed it under the film title, to again associate it with the whispered tagline at the start of the trailer and the soundtrack also used in the trailer were Marilyn Manson is heard repeating the phrase 'this is only a game' - everything from the soundtrack to the tagline is now synergetically linked. Next, I typed 'LUCY RIMMER-HALL TELLS ALL ABOUT THE GLOVED SERIAL KILLER WHO TAKES FEAR INTO THE NEXT LEVEL' and placed it inbetween the gloved Hangman hands in order to give a small insight into the idea of the film and entice horror fanatics with words like 'SERIAL KILLER' and 'FEAR ONTO THE NEXT LEVEL'. It is clear that the image links with the main feature 'HANGMAN' since the text is placed directly next to Melanie's fearful expression and is the only text that has a different font from the rest of the features, whilst the 'GLOVED SERIAL KILLER' coordinates with its placement inbetween the gloved Hangman hands. I have further promoted Hangman as being the main feature by placing a banner above the masthead reading 'EXCLUSIVE HANGMAN SPECIAL'. By using buzz words like 'EXCLUSIVE' and 'SPECIAL' in bold green text on a white background that stands out from the rest of the cover, it becomes immediately eye catching and the audience will be enticed due to the fact that this feature is exclusive to this magazine only and thus, will want to buy it. 

Next, I needed to fill in the rest of the cover with other pugs and puffs giving insights into features in the magazine and enticing them into buying it. I created two pugs on the side of the magazine promoting other features to be seen in the magazine - I made the first few words of each feature larger and bolder as they were words associated with the horror genre and would be immediately eye catching for the audience. For example, in the feature 'GORE, GUTS AND GIRLS / THE INSIDE SCOOP ON HALLOWEEN III', the words 'GORE, GUTS AND GIRLS' was made bold red to associate with the gore of it all and the film title 'HALLOWEEN III' was also made bold since it was the film title, and important in enticing fans of that particular film franchise. This is the same for the other 'WORLD WAR Z' feature, in which the lead 'ZOMBIE WARS' was made large and bloody red for zombie fanatics and to associate with the gore of the zombie topic, and the famous names like 'MARC FORSTER', 'BRAD PITT' and 'WORLD WAR Z' was made red to stand out and entice fans of these particular directors, actors and films. I used another pug along the bottom of the page when writing 'PLUS! THE DARKEST HOUR, UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING AND THE INNKEEPERS' to give a quick list of other films discussed in the magazine and to attract the widest audience possible - the audience who are interested in these particular films. I took inspiration for this idea from both Empire and Total Film magazines, since they both seemed to do it and it is a clever selling technique. Next, I decided that I needed to finish of the selling devices for this cover by using two puffs - the first I created was a green and black stamp-like circle above the 'PLUS!' features and wrote 'HORROR POSTER SPECIAL'. The buzz word 'SPECIAL' in itself attracts the eye of the audience because it gives the impression that it is a free special feature that makes it different from other film magazines, and it is further made to stand out by being on a large stamp-like green background in a large bold white text. I find that it is the first thing my eye is drawn to when I look at the cover and thus, it immediately establishes the 'HORROR' genre and wins over the eye of the audience. I created a second puff just above the barcode on the right-hand side of the cover, and reads 'COMPETITION' (in bright bold green lettering which again stands out) ' TURN TO PAGE 9 TO FIND OUT MORE'. The 'TURN TO PAGE 9' is acting as an imperative, commanding the reader to turn to this page to have a chance at winning something. The majority of people love to have a chance to win something and will jump at the chance to enter before they even know what they would win! Therefore, this is a successful enticing device.

This is my completed magazine cover, and it links well with the poster and trailer through its common font usage and imagery.